Damian Black waved his wand. A transparent, arc-shaped Wind Blade swept across the writhing White Arm Worms on the ground, instantly slicing dozens of them in two.
Before he could even check the results of his attack, he noticed the golden sand beginning to vibrate violently.
A moment later, countless pale, fleshy arms reached out from beneath the dunes.
The sickening sight actually reminded Damian of the River of Oblivion from Eastern mythology.
At that moment, he felt as if he were standing on the Bridge of Helplessness, watching countless lonely, drowning ghosts reaching up from the murky depths to drag him down.
The scene made his scalp tingle. The sheer mass of human-like limbs writhing in the sand pushed him right to the edge of the uncanny valley.
Suddenly, the swarm of White Arm Worms underwent a horrifying new change.
Countless pale arms gathered in one direction, intertwining and climbing rapidly over one another. Within seconds, they twisted together to form a towering, grotesque giant tree composed entirely of pale flesh.
The sheer number of White Arm Worms was overwhelming. Damian cast several rapid-fire spells, blasting away huge chunks of the mass, but more worms immediately swarmed up from the sand to fill the gaps in the giant tree's trunk.
The massive tree of white arms violently lashed out like a whip. Damian immediately commanded his Invisible Hand, yanking himself to the right to narrowly dodge the crushing blow.
However, the giant tree was unexpectedly agile. It abruptly changed direction in mid-air, sweeping horizontally toward where Damian had just dodged.
Damian quickly realized that the Invisible Hand was simply too slow to gain the necessary distance.
He reached into his Undetectable Extension pouch, pulling out a solid block of raw material. Tapping it with his wand, he unleashed a powerful Transfiguration.
The block rapidly expanded, transforming into a massive, majestic giant eagle.
Damian vaulted onto the eagle's broad back. With another flick of his wand, he transfigured the creature's feathers into a sturdy saddle to avoid being thrown off in mid-air. He then cast two quick charms on the bird to drastically reduce its weight and increase its flight speed.
The giant eagle let out a piercing cry, spreading its massive wings and taking flight. It quickly put some much-needed distance between Damian and the thrashing tree of flesh.
This specific application of Transfiguration was something Damian had only recently researched.
Before his recent magical breakthrough, he could only transfigure birds of a normal, natural size. Whenever he had tried to scale them up to a size capable of carrying a human passenger, structural problems always arose. To fly while carrying a heavy load, it wasn't enough to simply scale up the bird's overall size; precise, complex modifications to the wingspan and muscle density were also required.
Damian commanded the giant eagle to slow down slightly, deliberately leading the fleshy tree in tight circles.
After weaving back and forth several times, the mindless monstrosity twisted its own trunk, effectively tying itself into a massive, straining knot.
Once the giant tree's trunk could no longer stretch, the countless white arms making up its form began to lose their grip. They fell off and scattered across the sand like rain.
However, the moment they hit the ground, they began to gather again, preparing to twist back together for another strike.
"Quite agile, aren't you?" Damian sneered coldly.
He pointed his wand directly downward. A massive surge of raw magic poured from his core, crashing into the desert floor.
The golden sand rapidly melted, boiling and shifting under the intense magical pressure. Within seconds, the entire dune transformed into a roaring sea of fire.
Damian slumped slightly in the saddle, feeling as if his body had been instantly hollowed out. Turning an entire landscape of sand into a sea of fire required far more magical stamina than he had anticipated.
Still, ever since his Transfiguration had reached a new realm, the sheer scale of what he could accomplish had skyrocketed.
He pulled a few replenishing potions from his pouch and quickly downed them. After catching his breath for a few moments, he waved his wand forward like a maestro.
The sea of fire surged upwards, coalescing into a massive, roaring serpent of flame. The fiery beast dove from the sky, instantly swallowing the countless white arms that had just begun to reassemble.
The pale arms twisted and thrashed frantically within the inferno. Burning limbs constantly rained down from the sky; for a brief moment, it looked exactly like a grotesque meteor shower.
The arms that fell to the ground continued to burn violently, quickly carbonizing and crumbling into fine ash.
Damian's expression suddenly changed. The White Arm Worms have zero resistance to fire, he realized. But if they burn completely to ash, I won't be able to physically touch them to let the metal disc absorb their energy!
He quickly tried to revert the fire serpent back into harmless sand. However, because he had already overexerted himself during the initial Transfiguration, and the potions hadn't fully restored his magic yet, the flames were incredibly stubborn.
It took a long while before he successfully extinguished the inferno, leaving behind a scorched desert covered in carbonized arms and piles of ash.
Damian landed the eagle and stepped cautiously onto the blackened sand. He reached out and touched one of the carbonized arms.
Instantly, a burst of red light emanated from the corpse. The energy flowed up his arm and was greedily absorbed by the mysterious metal disc residing in his mind.
He touched a pile of ash next, but nothing happened. The worms that had burned completely to ash no longer contained any red light; the energy within their residue had entirely dissipated.
Even so, Damian still reaped a bountiful harvest.
The red energy contained within a single White Arm Worm was roughly equivalent to that of the Horned Stone Beetles he had hunted previously. This time, he had successfully absorbed the energy from nearly several hundred worms.
Furthermore, the red crystal embedded inside the metal disc seemed completely insatiable. Whenever it absorbed new energy, the existing power within it would seemingly compress to make room, allowing it to continuously gorge itself.
Damian had originally wanted to see if the red crystal would undergo any new, qualitative changes once it was completely full.
Unfortunately, the artifact acted exactly like a rigged promotional discount event from his past life—forever teasing him by remaining stubbornly stuck at 99.9%.
After harvesting the last of the corpses, Damian mounted the eagle and flew a bit further through the gray mist.
Soon, he once again spotted the Antlered Girl. She stood silently in the fog, emanating a soft, silvery-white ghostly light.
Just like before, she slowly raised her right hand. Keeping her fingers pressed together, she pointed her index finger deliberately in a specific direction.
Damian immediately activated the metal disc in his mind.
The eerie scene before him slowly stretched and warped. Damian fought through the intense, nauseating discomfort caused by the traversal, focusing all his attention on the exact direction the Antlered Girl was pointing.
In the instant his consciousness left the Gray Mist World, Damian's perspective was forcefully elevated.
Looking down from high above, tracing the line of the Antlered Girl's glowing finger, he once again caught a fleeting glimpse of that massive, terrifying shadow lurking deep within the fog.
Back in the real-world campsite, Damian woke up with a violent start.
He sat up in his bedroll, taking several deep, ragged breaths to alleviate the suffocating sensation of drowning that always accompanied his return.
He glanced up at the sky above the Winter Forest; it was already faintly bright.
During his previous two visits, Damian had discovered a crucial detail: when he entered the Mist World, time in this Wizarding World did not stop. This was entirely different from his soul's traversal between the Hogwarts World and this one, where time seemed to pause.
Damian pulled a pocket watch from his robes. He compared its hands with the secondary pocket watch he had deliberately left on the ground before entering his dream.
The times matched perfectly. Time in the Mist World and this physical Wizarding World ran synchronously. This proved there was a much deeper, underlying connection between the two realms.
He rubbed his eyes and glanced toward the center of the camp, suddenly frowning. There was only one wizard sitting by the dying campfire on night watch.
Damian scanned the dim perimeter. He soon spotted the second watchman standing near the Two-legged Pack Beasts, rummaging around in the dark for reasons unknown.
Damian quietly got to his feet. Slipping his wand into his sleeve, he walked unhurriedly toward the second wizard.
The man belonged to the trade association faction of the Exploration Team, and Damian was not very familiar with him.
Hearing footsteps approaching from behind, the watchman immediately whipped his head around. Seeing Damian, he offered a stiff, somewhat forced smile.
"Ah, Black. I've been on watch all night and got a bit hungry," the man explained smoothly. "I was just looking for something to eat from my luggage."
In the split second the man turned his head, the faint, ethereal blue light glowing in Damian's eyes instantly vanished.
The watchman blinked, slightly stunned. He thought he had just seen a flash of intense blue magic in the boy's eyes. But upon looking closer, he saw nothing but normal pupils. He quickly chalked it up to mental exhaustion from his long shift.
The man pulled a piece of dried, salted meat from his saddlebag and held it out. "Would you like a piece?"
Damian smiled warmly and shook his head. "No thank you. It's almost dawn anyway; Al will be up soon to prepare a proper breakfast."
The watchman nodded in agreement. Clutching the dried meat, he walked briskly past Damian, heading toward the campfire in the center of the camp.
Damian stood perfectly still, watching the man's receding figure with an entirely blank, cold expression.
Thanks to his brief, subtle use of Legilimency during that split second of eye contact, Damian knew the truth.
The night watchman was lying through his teeth.
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